[modriano]

Up until 2019, Windows was my daily driver and had been for the prior ~20. years. I had been regularly ssh-ing into Linux machines, but it didn't seem like a place I could live. Then, in 2019, I built a PC and, wanting to get more proficient in Linux environments, I made it a dual boot setup with a Ubuntu desktop partition and a Windows partition, expecting I'd inevitably get frustrated on the Linux partition by sidequests debugging driver issues or setting up peripherals, unproductive yak-shaving stuff. I had to google a setting or two over the first couple days, but other than that, everything just worked on the Linux partition. Things opened quickly, things installed easily, and things I was worried about (e.g. nvidia and printer drivers) were either automatic or a one-time step so small I don't remember it. After a couple weeks, I noticed there hadn't been a single moment where I had to switch to the Windows partition, and a month after that I reformatted the Windows partition ssd and added the storage to the Linux partition.

If you have considered switching to Linux and worried that it would be a chore, give it a shot (if you have the freedom to choose). It has been polished and ready since at least 2019. I have to use a Windows machine for work and, like this New Outlook issue shows, MSFT has concluded most users can't or won't leave so there's no margin in improving UX and some margin in doing things that make UX much worse. I don't think I'll elect to have a personal Windows machine ever again in my life.

[raincole]

> It has been polished and ready since at least 2019.

Linux people said things like this in 2019 too. It's always "been improved a lot in the past few years" (not saying this statement can't be true.)

At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up.

[zormino]

I actually agree, Linux is well past the point a minimally tech competent person can use it fine, but it doesn't solve the fact that even if Linux was flawless, there is still a switching cost in time, relearning a new system, and worst (best?) of all of you decide you are willing to do all of that now you can get entirely lost in the weeds picking a distro. I used Linux all through university, then went back to windows out of convenience and needing to use it for work anyways.

Until one day I got so frustrated with constant settings resets, reboots at the worst times for software updates that fail, highjacking my pc after every update for a guided tour of the latest things Microsoft decided to break, and telemetry that can only be disabled with an obscure registry hack that changes every few months, I just couldn't anymore.

Linux has been good enough as a daily driver for a while now, but even with proton I don't know if the pull factors towards Linux will ever be strong enough for most people. For me though the push factors away from Microsoft had gotten so strong I couldn't take it anymore.

[anakaine]

Theres a lot of friction from enterprise Microsoft admins, too. "But how will I group policy and Entra xyz?" is a concern I hear regularly, but still struggle to educate them away from.

[ethbr1]

This is more desktop linux's certification and standardization problem than technical problem.

Because "It works" is insufficient for regulated industries that require "Prove is works using ___ standard" (where proving takes a ton of people-time), and more and more industries are soft-regulated as a condition of cyber insurance.

I.e. what RedHat was created to solve

[JoeBOFH]

Suse has filled that niche pretty well also.

[brnt]

How do you educate them though?

[pseudohadamard]

I've found a clue-by-four to be a relatively effective tool.

[DrBazza]

MS has inertia on its side, and its abusive marketing and lock-in strategies of the 90s. Remember when you couldn't buy a PC without Windows from most vendors? Meaning you were paying MS, even if you immediately uninstalled it?

The long term outcome of that is that 90+% of industry still buys Windows PCs. And non-industry: once non-techie people are on an OS (Windows/MacOS), many don't move off it, though Apple's ecosystem has been a good carrot+stick.

One of the more interesting indicators is (even though desktop software is in decline) - the number of apps that are Windows and Mac and maybe linux, and the increasing number of apps that Mac-only or Mac+Linux but do NOT have a Windows download. Something unimaginable in the 90s and 00s.

MS are certainly accelerating adoption of other platforms due to their own mismanagement.

[pjmlp]

It still can't be a PC without windows, when going to the shopping mall stores normies use.

The computers on display are gaming PCs with windows, PC laptops with Windows, macOS laptops, and Chromebooks, which in Europe are largely ignored.

Normies aren't going to Tuxedo website asking for a Linux desktop.

[edg5000]

I just realized, when I got my HP laptop I've never even booted its default Windows install, but MS still got paid. I'd rather have that money to go HP so the laptop could be made better. Insane how they're getting paid for nothing, almost like a tax. HP could just have offered an OSless option, but no. A silly world we live in.

[ethbr1]

> HP could just have offered an OSless option, but no.

At HP-scale, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the money for a Windows license does go to HP.

I expect the major vendors, today, have fairly equal bargaining power with MS over unit license costs, in the volumes they're buying.

[walterbell]

HP offered FreeDOS as an OS option.

[RajT88]

2026 is the year of Linux on the Desktop!

> At this point I'm convinced that no matter how much or little Linux desktop is improved, its market share is solely dependent on how much Microsoft fucked up.

Lifelong Windows user here. If you could get the kind of driver support you have with Windows for just whatever the fuck you have lying around, I'd probably use my Ubuntu laptop as more of a daily driver.

[saltcured]

Not lifelong, but I've been using Linux since 1993. Through subconscious selective pressure, I only have things lying around that are useful with Linux.

It's kind of liberating, to be able to ignore a huge amount of crap in the market because you can tell it is just some sort of delivery vector for proprietary Windows drivers and their dodgy installers.

[fluffybucktsnek]

Unless your hardware is exotic (or actively anti-consumer), most devices are well supported. If you wouldn't mind, what issues did you have recently?

[danudey]

Ubuntu 26.04 has a bug in their pc-kernel snap causing it not to ship firmware for some devices (like my iwlwifi chipset), and because it mounts read-only directories into /var/lib/firmware/ you can't install the updated firmwares from apt either. Unless you're willing to do something like unpack the .deb file manually and extract the relevant firmwares from it, your wifi card won't work.

This isn't an issue with the hardware being too new or anything; it all works and the firmwares are all available, but Ubuntu's kernel snaps don't ship them and they make it much harder to get them yourself either.

[noisy_boy]

I bought the Lenovo's proprietary Ethernet adapter from Lenovo directly for my Thinkpad X1 Extreme because I wanted to keep a USB-C port free. It didn't work at all under Fedora. A third-party USB-C to Ethernet adapter I bought works flawlessly.

If Lenovo's own adapter doesn't work on one of the most well supported product lines on Linux, that is not a good look.

To be very clear, I am a long time Linux user and most of the third-party stuff usually just works.

[econ]

I remember handing an Ethernet cable to a friend and he said I was getting old. His laptop didn't have Ethernet! I still haven't recovered from the realisation.

My [old] laptop had a a card reader, hdmi, vga, a serial port and rows of usb2 ports, a plug for power, headphone jack etc etc

Back at his place he showed me the USB hub and the Rube Goldberg dongle collection. I said, ahh there you have all those connectors you didn't need.

I now think USB is magic. Not wanting to use it for everything means you are getting old. The future is a desk full of dongles.

https://resolume.com/forum/download/file.php?id=5430&mode=vi...

[davely]

Excuse me! I hide them in a rats nest under my desk like a civilized person.

[annzabelle]

On the desktop that's true, but when I last used linux laptops (Debian, probably in 2021 or so), there were significant driver issues for the touchpad, touchscreen, buttons for brightness, and audio on every laptop I tried.

I eventually gave up and bought a Macbook and installed Homebrew and Rectangle on it. I haven't thought about drivers or firmware updates for that device since I bought it.

If I did own a desktop, I would use linux on it, and I solely use linux when I'm using VMs or cloud providers.

Recently started working at a company that uses windows and .net and it's so bad.

[edg5000]

Did you install the nonfree Debian ISO? Debian back then by default did not ship non-free drivers, meaning half your stuff won't work.

You should have used their special (released by them) nonfree ISO or Ubuntu and you would've been fine.

Your stuff is probably supported by official debian repos, just not ones that are enabled by default.

Try Linux sometime again! You won't regret it.

[Grombobulous]

I would say even 2021 is long enough ago for that landscape to have changed quite a bit. For one thing, Framework was barely a company back then, now they’re a mature and highly viable OEM choice.

As a small tip, I prefer using Arch-based distributions as they get new kernels rapidly and therefore new hardware support comes fast. They’re also an obvious choice for people who play games on Steam since SteamOS is arch based.

In the AI age, almost any problem with Linux is a quick query or copy/pasted error message away. The days of spending hours on troubleshooting are over.

If you were willing to buy a whole new piece of hardware with a MacBook, perhaps you’d be willing to buy a Linux-first laptop in the future? For example, the Framework 13 Pro has purportedly caught up to many of the advantages of a MacBook Pro (battery life, haptic trackpad, CNC aluminum chassis), judging by early press impressions. Over half of Framework 13” customers install Linux and it’s Ubuntu certified. Besides being the premier Linux laptop, you also get all the repairability and modularity benefits the brand has on offer.

I personally own the current non-Pro model and despite its shortcomings that the new model doesn’t have (I have my preorder in), the overall package is a pretty modern laptop where 100% of the hardware works flawlessly with Linux.

Even if you aren’t looking for that type of machine and just want something from a more common OEM like Lenovo or ASUS, I have found that solid Linux support is not tough to find. Basically any common laptop that’s older than 6 months old is well-supported. One of my friends bought a $500 ThinkPad T14 on eBay and of course 100% of the hardware works.

Macs are the gold standard for not having any need to mess with drivers, but I have found my AMD graphics driver to be a lot more stable in Linux than in Windows. That was the major decision point in wiping my desktop gaming PC and installing CachyOS.

My “final straw” motivation to leave macOS on my laptop last year was Liquid Glass. Other motivations included my frustration with certain Apple services and the level of abstraction and lock-in they have, running out of storage space in my system, as well as frustration with my laptop being capable enough but unable to play any of most of my PC games from a software standpoint.

Returning to speaking of something relevant to this article, now that I have no macOS or Windows, I am no longer tied down with Thunderbolt as the only viable desktop email client anymore as I don’t need to support all three operating systems. I’m enjoying Evolution a lot more than Thunderbird, but of course there are numerous Linux-only choices I could have gone with.

[mjmas]

Not OP, but I have an Asus StudioBook 17.

Of what is builtin, the fingerprint reader and the numberpad functionality of the touchpad don't work.

Everything else works fine though.

[RajT88]

3 Words: Dell Docking Stations

[subscribed]

LOL, preach. Work worst with Dell XPS series (have to power cycle the laptop so the dock would display something again), work better with ThinkPad and Framework laptops.

They're at least free :)

[RajT88]

Dell Docking stations are practically free, yes. Even on Windows, I've had issues, because of the Dell fuckery with docking stations - single cable docking doesn't work if your docking station is too new, and your laptop too old. Bananas.

On Ubuntu, I've purchased 3 different docking stations, and tried 2 existing ones, and none has worked quite right (some just flat out don't have all the drivers they need). The Windows laptop I have (which is extremely similar in hardware and generation), if you get a video signal out to a monitor, it's a very safe bet everything else works.

Back to "Practically Free" for old Dell docking stations. I acquired 3 of them for about 15-20 each shipped off eBay. lol At least I'm not sinking hundreds of dollars into each attempt at a docking station that may or may not work.

[squidgyhead]

I have the opposite experience. With the HP docking station, we were unable to drive a 4k monitor using windows. On linux thisnjust worked.

[AussieWog93]

> Unless your hardware is exotic (or actively anti-consumer)

Bruh.

2 weeks ago I was getting full kernel crashes on Ubuntu Server due to an Intel iGPU on a Dell Laptop with a 7th gen i7. Fortunately Claude Code fixed it after a couple of attempts, but still.

Audio was completely corrupt on a Bazzite HTPC I tried to set up 6 months ago, until I changed some setting on my TV related to 10-bit colour. Then, when that was sorted Kodi would only run in 30Hz despite the fact that other apps supported 60.

My previous laptop with Arch (circa 2020) sometimes wouldn't wake from sleep.

When I ran an OpenSUSE Desktop (circa 2019) I picked Noveau instead of the proprietary drivers, and the picture was all corrupt. Then when I installed the proper Nvidia drivers, I did the wrong thing and my whole screen turned black, Linus-style.

I then switched the same desktop to Ubuntu, which was better out of the box, but would stop reading my USB SD card reader after unplugging it a few times. WiFi would also randomly drop out until I rebooted the whole system every few hours, and when talking to my Brother Laser Printer it would only print in like 30dpi or somthing ridiculous. I was emailing the files to myself, rebooting back into Windows and then printing from there because it was so bad.

The 5 year gap between the current Linux attempts and the last one had less to do with Linux improvements and more to do with agentic LLMs being able to paper over all the cracks. To be fair, though, I expect regular people having access to Opus 4.5-tier or higher models will result in all kinds of minor issues that would normally be overlooked actually getting fixed on Linux. (Thinking about it a bit more, regular users will have access to subsidised tokens too, so a million open source devs running $20 Claude Pro subscriptions might between them be able to do way more with that $20 million than Microsoft could with Enterprise API access).

[throwaway2056]

Pretty sure something in your hardware failing

We regularly buy dell latitudes or ThinkPad TPX series NEW ones for a large University. 100% Linux only usage.

Usual sleep/resume problems. No other problems

All problems with gfx you state are often listed in all dell forums - with windows.

Aliexpress style mini HT PC are always with poor drivers - even on Windows. Not just bazzite.

[laughing_man]

I switched to Ubuntu a few months back, and I didn't have any issues. It was faster than installing Windows.

[tracker1]

I'm not really using anything too exotic... my hardware all works, and my printer has generally been without issue (HP Color Laser on ethernet) regardless of what I use to print from.

For me, I switched when the start menu started showing internet ads as part of the results... I ran insiders for years, often joking that WSL was my favorite Linux distro... I love the new MS Terminal, and pretty happy with a lot of things. That said, there's far more that annoys me... it's too in your face trying to sell you additional software/services/features that frankly I find offensive from an OS. It's like built in malware ads. They might as well try to sell me an X10 camera in those popups, I'd feel just as irritated about it.

I went from dual booting, to just Linux for my personal use a few years ago and been pretty happy. I'm not a gamer, and was already using Linux as my dev target for server software. It wasn't a big deal for me. Even the growing pains for Cosmic have been less annoying than some of the "features" of Windows.

[coffeebeqn]

Try mint on a live boot. I’ve found it to be the most “just works” on various laptops

[fuzzfactor]

Desktops too, and I've been preferring the Debian version known as Linux Mint Debian Edition since they came out with LMDE 7.

[econ]

Having no one to ask if you can't get things to work was a big issue until LLMs came along. You can ask things online but people are reluctant to keep asking and/or keep explaining what they've tried.

I'm sure the lone Linux experimenter just gave up some place half way configuring the HP printer.

[Suppafly]

>Linux people said things like this in 2019 too.

They've been saying it since it was competing with Windows XP at least.

[hdgvhicv]

I find it hilarious. I’ve been using Linux for over 25 years and people keep telling me “now it’s ready”

[wazoox]

Yep. I removed the last Windows98SE partition from my PC in 2003. Never looked back.

[bee_rider]

I don’t know if Linux has improved a lot in the last few years. I’ll observe, though, that it always feels like it has for the first few years you use it, since it becomes intuitive and natural.

[malbs]

Agreed. 2026 was the year. The degradation of win 11 , forced win accounts everywhere. I switched to Linux Mint, and I haven't switched back. Missing out on a few random games that aren't supported yet, I decided it was time to get rid of windows on my desktop.

I do have one windows machine still, and thats my simrig, this is a purpose built computer+rig specifically for iRacing and iRacing have said that they won't support linux, and so w/ that, I'll keep it in windows, until they change their position.

[BiteCode_dev]

Yep, see also "lies, damn lies, and feedback on arch linux":

https://www.bitecode.dev/p/lies-damn-lies-and-feedback-on-ar...

[dev_hugepages]

I read your blog and I can't agree, i've installed arch Linux before and only had to read the arch wiki page on it and it worked fine with none of the issues you described.

Same thing with gentoo, that I am daily driving now.

I sure had hickups but I managed to solve them by sitting and reading the manuals/wikis of the distros directly, or the programs I was dealing with. Maybe the problem is that you read an obscure forum to get your answer? I don't know.

[BiteCode_dev]

You are exactly the too good to realize all the problems you solve profile from the article.

[giancarlostoro]

Whenever Steam released Proton is when Linux started to get way better. I used to daily Linux at work in 2017 onwards. Been dailying at home since 2022.

[sirwitti]

Man, I just realized it's been 20 years for me. I vaguely remember sometime in 2006 that Windows Vista was inevitable and decided to switch to linux.

I don't care about fussing around and just need a useful machine for work and fun. Linux is far from perfect for me but the amount of crap windows or macos throw at me when I have to use them is almost comical.

[agumonkey]

I moved long ago to use a fully legally free OS, but at that time, win7 or even win10 weren't bad neighbors to visit from time to time. But win11 became a weird new-trend copycat with even more bloat.

[fracus]

Same for me. Possibly longer. I just never think about Windows anymore. I think it helps these days that "programs" aren't so much a thing anymore. A lot of what used to be an OS program is now a free online service.. like email, word processing, chats, multimedia, etc..

[jjav]

> It has been polished and ready since at least 2019.

Linux has been a fine desktop since almost its beginning.

My first work-issued laptop was in 1994, running Linux. Using a PCMCIA modem to connect to the internet via dialup. Worked perfect. Every year since then (that's 32 years now) I've had Linux desktop(s) and laptop(s) and it all works fine.

If one looks for excuses, excuses can be found, but it has worked fine since the beginning.

[dachris]

Pretty much the same here. A happy Ubuntu user for 4 years now. Here and there, there's still minor issues, but nothing a quick search or AI can't help you with. And we're hackers here after all.

[techjamie]

8 years here. Mint->Arch->NixOS. Basically zero Windows use in that time outside of niche needs.

[rwyinuse]

I agree. Sometimes one needs Windows for some legacy software, but for 99% of use cases Linux works, is faster and respects your privacy more.

[Borborygymus]

All Operating Systems suck. Linux sucks less for things I care about, and has done for a long time - much longer than 7 years for my purposes.

I too am required to use a Windows machine for work, which seems to get worse with every release. They even ruined notepad.exe. The bloat is unavoidable. The new laptop I got one year ago that seemed more than enough when new, is now struggling under the bloat. It takes me in excess of 10 minutes to log in, connect VPN, start teams, outlook and putty in a citrix session. Madness!

[Markoff]

get back to me when you will be able to install easily Chinese keyboard/input into Linux as you can with Windows and when you will be easily switch keyboards with alt+left shift, I was setting up computers with Linux and it's major PITA for such basic thing, same with reassigning right alt and windows menu keys to different buttons (Home/End) on laptop

[tyre]

Have you tried a Mac? Apple silicon is fantastic, build quality is the best on the market, you're still running a unix OS, and there's a huge community of developers + companies making things work.

[modriano]

Yeah, and I'm a big fan of the the hardware. I bought a refurbished MacBook Air in 2022 (M1 or M2, I don't recall) to try it on and see how I liked it. I mainly used it as a thin client to ssh to my homelab, but it was far and away the best laptop hardware on the market and I loved the battery life. I found that I couldn't use it with two (non-duplicating) external monitors, so I considered the test a success, gave the MacBook Air to my wife, and bought a MacBook Pro (which I'm still using mainly as a thin client and ssh-ing to a Linux machine and working there; plug for Tailscale, it makes everything really nice and easy).

I know it's silly to have a MacBook Pro just for the screen size, its ability to drive two external monitors, and the battery life Apple Silicon achieves. And I feel a bit rude not really learning much about the dev tools the community has made for MacOS. But it is just really nice hardware (I just wish it wasn't such a chore to configure my Macbook to have the same ctrl+c, ctrl+v keyboard shortcuts when using an external keyboard, but the hardware is sufficiently better than anything else on the market that I tolerate it).

[annzabelle]

Macs are even at a good price point compared to similar hardware these days, and don't seem to have the same level of planned obsolescence of windows laptops.

A mac with homebrew and rectangle installed works well enough as a hobby development machine for me that I rarely feel the need to ssh into something else.

[jjav]

> you're still running a unix OS

They are trying so hard to destroy that, basically nothing is left.

Just yesterday I needed to run equivalent of strace on a mac to trace system call. Great, it has dtruss (truss was the command on Solaris). Turns out dtruss is still there, but apple has completely broken it, it doesn't work.

Just an example of how extremely developer-hostile Apple is.

[fsflover]

Macs are on their way to enshittification, too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46322556 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43243075

Also, see this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

[PeterStuer]

I found AI (Claude) to be extremely effective in setting up, managing and maintainimg Linux, just like it was in managimg Windows for those of us incapable of memorizing 1.000's of Powershell commands.

[fho]

I have some fond memories of getting into computers around 2000. Building PCs, installing Windows, re-installing Windows ever so often.

At some point Windows just crashed and couldn't be brought back to life, straight up refused to be installed on that disk again.

(Funfact: the crash happened while playing some opensource sci-fi game... Produced by Microsoft)

I had a Gentoo Linux partition back then thanks to a friend from school and used that for everything from that point on.

Interestingly I never really had major issues. Running Warcraft 3 on Gentoo, writing my thesis (theseses actually) on Ubuntu and later switching to Arch Linux just worked.

I still remember switching to Gnome 3 (from KDE) and being impressed by how fast the Shell felt.

...

Fast forward to two years ago and I am forced to use Windows for the first time in 20+ years, in a locked down corporate setting nonetheless.

... what a hot mess :-)

[justsomehnguy]

My favourite part of these success stories when Nautilus can,t replicate some functionality which Windows has since forever, eg copy-pasting tex and files across 3 RDP sessions deep. Sure, someone who uses their computer as a glorified SSH terminal with an occasional Google.Docs edition wouldn't see a problem, but I, who works everyday - do.

[kaladin-jasnah]

It's reductive to say that people who aren't "copy-pasting tex and files across 3 RDP sessions deep" are not "working everyday." While Windows fits your use case, some people do use SSH for their real work as well, even if it is simpler.

[tracker1]

Hell, VS Code + Remote SSH is pretty freaking awesome.. edit locally run remote. The integrated terminal pretty much makes this as smooth an experience as working locally.

[justsomehnguy]

> some people do use SSH for their real work as well

Somehow all that 'real work' boils down to configuring servers. Most people don't configure servers 24/7 or even 8/5. They need to work with files of different formats and with different apps. Now tell me, how would you use SSH (not SSH tunneling, lol) to loot at some .jpegs to decide to what would be used in somewhere.

[grebc]

The only people who I’ve ever known to use tex are honours students & academics. Comedy gold saying that’s work.

[justsomehnguy]

Comedy gold is what it didn't occur to you what that was a typo in my comment.

Now go consistently copy-paste text (at least) and files over your VNC connection.

[hdgvhicv]

I used latex on occasion for about a decade after graduation, but now it’s only my CV I use, and I’m getting rusty. Markdown is far more covienient.

Never used Tex specifically.

[krferriter]

Mount a shared drive? Use sshfs?

[justsomehnguy]

Yes, exactly what the problem is. Every Linux fanboi has a lot of problem solving CLI incantations. While Windows users just use the default and working copy-paste (and don't need root/Administrator rights for that too).